HALIFAX, Canada - Navy Secretary Richard Spencer said Saturday that he would comply with any order by President Donald Trump regarding the case of a Navy SEAL whose continuance in the elite unit is being reviewed by the service after a controversial murder charge.

"I work at the pleasure of the president," Spencer said, denying reports that he has threatened to resign. "I do not interpret what the president does. I do what he says."

But Spencer said he did not consider a presidential tweet to be an order.

His statement, made on the margins of an international security conference in this Canadian maritime city, came as Trump's interventions last week in three military court cases have unsettled many at the Pentagon, who voiced concerns about the president undermining the military justice system.

Trump issued pardons for two soldiers accused of war crimes, including one who has been convicted. In the same announcement, he said he would also reinstate the rank of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was acquitted of murder in July but convicted of posing with the corpse of an Islamic State prisoner in Iraq.

The admiral overseeing the SEALs, Rear Adm. Collin Green, has since decided to bring Gallagher and three Navy SEAL officers who oversaw him on his 2017 deployment before a board that will decide whether they are still fit to serve in the elite force. That caught Trump's attention and prompted a rebuke.

"The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher's Trident Pin," the SEAL insignia, Trump tweeted on Thursday. "This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!"

A tweet, Spencer said, is not an order. "I need a formal order," he said. But "if the president requests a stop in the process, the process stops. Good order and discipline is also obeying the orders of the president."

The Navy secretary spoke in response to a New York Times report Saturday that Spencer and Green had both threatened to resign or be fired if Trump ordered an end to the review process. A subsequent NBC News story said that military leaders hoping to keep Spencer from quitting had lobbied Trump not to issue an order.

Spencer did not speak directly to the NBC account, but he said "I haven't spoken to anyone" about any thoughts of resigning. Asked if Green had threatened to resign, he said, "No, not at all ... He has not."

Rear Adm. Charles Brown, the Navy's top spokesman, said they were aware of Trump's tweet and awaiting further guidance.

"The Navy follows the lawful orders of the President," he said in a statement. "We will do so in case of an order to stop the administrative review of ... Gallagher's professional qualification."

The status of Gallagher and the other SEALs - Lt. Cmdr. Robert Breisch, Lt. Jacob Portier and Lt. Thomas MacNeil - is being reviewed in a process that military officials say will take a number of days to complete. Among the details the Navy has been trying to discern is whether Trump wanted the service to drop its deliberations against all four men or just Gallagher.

A lawyer for Gallagher, Tim Parlatore, lashed out against Green in an interview and said that the president's tweet indicated to him that Trump wanted the Navy to let all four cases go.

"This whole thing was a political show by a petulant child, and I think the president saw through that," Parlatore said of Green.

A Navy official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said Saturday that Green plans to continue with the reviews unless he receives a specific, official directive to do otherwise.

The dust-up comes months after efforts by Green to clean up disciplinary issues in the SEALs. They include the 2017 homicide of a Green Beret soldier in Mali, in which two SEALs and two Marine Raiders were charged, and the removal of a platoon of Navy SEALs from Iraq in July amid allegations of the rape of a service member and drinking on deployment.

In May, one of the SEALs implicated in the Mali case, Chief Petty Officer Adam Matthews, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit assault, unlawful entry, obstruction of justice and violating a general order by committing hazing and was sentence to a year in prison.

Chief Petty Officer Anthony DeDolph, the other SEAL implicated in the death of Army Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar, faces a murder trial next year.

Spencer attended the Halifax conference, an annual event that draws senior security officials and lawmakers from democracies around the world, to participate in a panel discussion about Russian and Chinese expansion in the Arctic.

Many participants in the three-day event that began Friday have expressed concerns about Trump's "America First" policies and fears that the United States is becoming more isolationist.

In a speech before the panel, Spencer emphasized the importance and strength of U.S. alliances, saying it was "something understood by those in uniform here."

"No matter what the state of politics in international relations of allies and friends, there is a military-to-military relationship that is strong ... It is ongoing all the time," he said, and "those relationships and foundations continue regardless of politics. Just to let everybody know."

Robert O'Brien, who took over as Trump's fourth national security adviser in September, after the departure of John Bolton, also attended the conference. Asked about concern about U.S. commitments to allies, he cited military deployments and diplomatic visits by senior administration officials throughout the world.

"Look at what the United States is doing," O'Brien said. "That answers the question about our engagement in the world far better than a presidential speech."

Much of the conference focused on China and the ability of democratic allies to confront the nation's economic and military expansion, as well as its human rights abuses of minorities and ongoing crackdown in Hong Kong. In Washington, legislation supporting pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong gained overwhelming bipartisan support.

Asked in a Friday interview with "Fox and Friends" whether he would sign that bill, Trump said that "I stand with Hong Kong ... But we're also in the process of making the largest trade deal in history" with China.

He called Chinese President Xi Jinping "a friend of mine" and an "incredible guy."

O'Brien said that he hadn't discussed the matter with Trump but that the president "may very well sign the bill" rather than veto it. "That bill is going to become law, given the numbers," he said, referring to unanimous approval in the Senate and only one vote against it in the House.

"I'd be very surprised if that bill does not become law soon," O'Brien said.

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Lamothe reported from Washington.